We have a crisis with dangerous teenage criminals. And political leaders who don’t even talk about it.
Republican Socialism in Atlantic City is as bad as “Democratic Socialism” in New York.
Crowded airports are a sign of success. Look how the government ruined trains and buses!
Jewish Harvest Holiday of Sukkoth (Tabernacles): Full Moon. High Tides. Bad Storm and Coastal Floods Today.
Vote now! Request a ballot from the County Clerk.
Republicans are doing a great job of running Atlantic County. However, its Republican state legislators are as out of touch and socialist as any Democrat!
SETH GROSSMAN: The Republican Party has great officials and candidates here in Atlantic County. Jeff Van Drew is one of the best member of Congress in the country. Joe O’Donoghue is doing a great job as sheriff, and Joe Giralo is the best county clerk we’ve had in years. Denny Levinson, and Republican commissioners, formerly freeholders like John Risley and June Byrnes are keeping taxes and spending under control in county government, however….
Last Wednesday, Atlantic County’s Republican State Senator Vince Polistina spoke for a full hour during his monthly interview on the Harry Hurley radio program. (WPGTalkRadio 95.5FM).
He didn’t mention the four Atlantic City teenagers who stole an SUV in Longport and killed people in Mays Landing five weeks ago. Or how they had long criminal records and were arrested for stealing another car just two months before!
Five weeks ago, on Saturday, August 22, four teenagers from Atlantic City stole a Mercedes SUV G Wagon in Longport. They refused to stop for police and drove through Somers Point and Egg Harbor Township to Mays Landing. They then drove at a high rate of speed in the wrong lane into oncoming traffic. They smashed head on into a car carrying Robert Barr and Alice Stilwell of Egg Harbor Township and killed them instantly.
At least one of those teenagers had a long criminal record. He had also been arrested in connection with the theft of another car several months before. However, he was released to commit further crimes–including one that caused two people to die.
That story was posted on our website last September 5. Click this link: 9.5.26 Seth Grossman WPG Radio – Liberty and Prosperity
And it now looks like nobody will be punished for causing those deaths. Police are now saying they don’t know which of the four teenagers was behind the wheel when the fatal collision took place. One was 18 years old, and the others were younger. It seems likely that a juvenile under the age of 18 will be blamed. That way, nobody will be punished as an adult for killing two people.
This is a crisis. Dozens of dangerous teenage criminals in Atlantic County are roaming free because there is only one juvenile jail in Atlantic County, and it holds only 26 inmates. Also, New Jersey laws do not require that dangerous teenage criminals be kept in jail until they are no longer dangerous.
Laws must be changed. New juvenile jails must be built. And we must also develop long term solutions. We need to change welfare programs and public schools that enable and promote a culture of crime and violence. We should even consider raising these children in orphanages instead of fatherless homes. However, nothing will change if our state legislators won’t talk about solutions.
Above Image: Republicans and Democrats unite to bail out the failed Sheraton Hotel in Atlantic City–a perfect example of Republican Socialism.
Republican Socialism in Atlantic City is as bad as Democratic Socialism in New York!
State Senator Vince Polistina instead spoke of bringing “collective” development and government “partnerships” to Atlantic City.
Polistina said that Atlantic City’s future depends on getting AtlantiCare to build a bigger hospital and for Stockton to run a bigger college. And to pay for all this, we need New Jersey government, through its EDA or Economic Development Authority, to borrow and spend a lot more money. How is this different from Zohran Mamdani’s “Democratic Socialism” in New York?
As with all socialism, this “Republican Socialism” also fails when it runs out of other people’s money!
The latest example is that Sheraton Hotel in the middle of Atlantic City. That hotel is a failure. So now all the politicians, Republicans and Democrats are talking about how they can have us pay more in taxes to save it.
Why is the Sheraton Hotel in Atlantic City going out of business? As realtors love to say, the three most important things in real estate are #1 location. #2 location, and #3 location. The Sheraton Hotel by the Convention Center in Atlantic City is a failure because was built in an awful location in the middle of nowhere. Yet because it is still inside Atlantic City, its hotel and restaurant customers still have to pay all of the extra Atlantic City “luxury” taxes that are charged in the casinos. Why?
Back in the 1980s, Republican State Senator Bill Gormley got a federal government grant to build a $5 million train station there. That is why we built a new train station in the middle of nowhere. Gormley So the government built this train station in the middle of nowhere, and that was a failure. Then Gormly got the state to borrow about $268 million to build a new convention center in the middle of nowhere in addition to the mostly empty Convention Hall on the Boardwalk.
Another part of that deal was the new Sheraton Hotel. It was built right next to the new train station and convention center in the middle of nowhere.
Senator Bill Gormley and other state politicians then tried to fix the problem by building a new “corridor.”. They said, “We have to somehow connect this failing train station and the convention center, and the Sheraton Hotel to the Boardwalk and the casinos. What can we do?”
First they spend lots of money on free jitneys to take people to and from other parts of town. Then they said, “Let’s borrow and spend a few hundred million dollars , give out a bunch of tax breaks and build a “Corridor “to connect them. And so they then built the Tangier Outlets and a bunch of restaurants. Of course that was another big failure, and most of them are now closed.
And how did we pay for them? Well, Bill Gormley came up with something absolutely brilliant. At that time, all of the Atlantic City casinos were giving absolute free parking to anyone who parked in their garages. And this was a big boom to dozens of stores and restaurants all over Atlantic City.
But Bill Gormley put an end to all that. He came up with a $2 tax on free parking! That killed dozens of stores and restaurants all along Atlantic and Pacific Avenues.
This is a classic description of socialism. This is where the economy is run by politicians. This where failures get rich if they are backed by politicians and where people who succeed are taxed out of business to pay for the failures.
So its hard for Republicans to complain about Zoran Mamdani and his Democratic Socialism when they give us the mess of corruption and incompetence called Republican Socialism!
So what should we do with the Sheraton Hotel in Atlantic City? At some point, you can’t tax successful businesses to bail out failures without causing real damage to the economy. You can’t expect government to do the things its supposed to do if it has to pay for so many things it has no business doing!
As former astronaut and former Eastern Airlines CEO Frank Borman said, “Capitalism without bankruptcy is like Christianity without Hell!”
We need to let failures fail, so that successes can succeed. If you put all this stuff up for auction, somebody will buy it and somebody will do something with it. Years ago, somebody actually made money with the Margate Elephant!
Or here’s an idea. Let’s set up museums demonstrating the failure of socialism. Or monuments to failed socialism so these failures can at least teach some lessons. We can use Atlantic City’s failed baseball stadium, the train station, two failed convention centers and the Sheraton Hotel!
Seth Grossman at Atlantic City International Airport (ACY) Last May. After Spirit Shut Down. Before Most Breeze and Allegiant Flights Began.
Crowded airports are a sign of success! Don’t ask government to fix them! Use ACY and other smaller airports.
I understand the stress and inconvenience John DeMasi went through flying from Philadelphia to Nashville last week. First his charter flight from Philadelphia was delayed three hours. Then, on the way back, his flight got diverted when the air traffic control equipment failed in Philadelphia.
However, overcrowded airports are a sign of success. It is a sign that airplane flights are cheap and convenient and more people than ever are flying where they want to go. We don’t want the government to mess it up.
First, remember that there are usually easy work-arounds. Avoid big, overcrowded airports like Philadelphia, Newark, and Chicago. Fly out of smaller airports. Use the Breeze flights to West Palm Beach or the Allegiant flights to Punta Gorda. Or use Frontier Airlines and fly out of Bordentown.
Remember how people the government ruined trains and buses. Just over a hundred years ago, America had the fastest, cheapest and most comfortable railroad service in the world.
We also used to have fast and convenient bus service in New Jersey. Now, hardly anyone uses them.
That’s because the federal government started taking over and controlling the railroads in the early 1900s with so-called Progressive Democrats like Woodrow Wilson. And then state government ruined most bus service here in New Jersey during the 1960s.
Above Image: Old City Hall and Public Service Bus Station Near Tennessee Avenue in Atlantic City around 1968. Before then, it was a train platform.
When I was a kid in Atlantic City in the 1950s, we had a big train station where the Expressway comes in today. I remember three bus companies. We had Greyhound, Lincoln, and Public Service ran buses to Philadelphia and New York. We had an Atlantic City Transportation Company that ran buses from the Inlet to Ocean City and the Mainland. They were clean, safe, comfortable and convenient. And if you didn’t like one bus company, you had others to choose from.
But then people complained to the politicians. They said the fares were too high. They said the bus routes and schedules were inconvenient. People asked their politicians to control these bus companies, and that’s what they did. By the mid 1970s, almost every bus company in New Jersey was out of business. So we had a big crisis. New Jersey had no trains and no buses!
So the politicians fixed it with socialism. In 1979, New Jersey state government went into the bus business. It formed this new corporation called New Jersey Transit with one share of stock. And that share was owned by New Jersey state government.
And then New Jersey passed a whole bunch of new laws. First, it made sure that New Jersey Transit did not have to follow any of the laws and rules that put all the private bus companies out of business. Second, it made it a crime for any private company to run bus service that competed with New Jersey Transit. Third, it made it very difficult to recover damages from New Jersey Transit if you were injured by its negligence. Fourth, since New Jersey Transit was owned by the government, it did not have to pay any taxes like private bus companies.
And finally, New Jersey Transit did not have to pay for itself. It lost money every single year since 1979, and New Jersey has to raise taxes to keep it going. Ironically, the biggest losses took place between 2009 and 2019 when Republican Chris Christie was Governor!
So, here we are. Thanks to socialism, or government control of all bus and train companies, everybody has to take an airplane to go somewhere. And that is why the big airports are overcrowded.
But be careful! Don’t say, I had a lot of stress when I used that big airport. Let have the government force the airlines to compensate me for the delays.
Those delays are caused by overcrowding, and there is overcrowding because most airlines are successful. The last thing we need is for government to fix the airlines like it fixed the railroad and bus companies.
The free market will work things out. We saw how Spirit wanted to merge with Jet Blue to stay in business. But Biden Democrats blocked that merger because they said they wanted to protect us consumers.
And so Spirit Airlines is gone, thanks to the government. But that wasn’t the end of the world. It was inconvenient for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. But now we have Allegiant and Breeze flying out of Atlantic City Airport. Where we have a free market, where failures go out of business and successes are given opportunities to start and grow, we get much better service and prices than when the government is running everything.
Jewish Harvest Holiday of Sukkoth (Tabernacles): Full Moon. High Tides. Bad Storm and Coastal Floods Today.
Vote now! Every County Clerk is giving out in-person and mail-in paper ballots every business day!
Finally, remember that today is Election Day. A lot of Boomers think there is an Election Day on November 3, more than 5 weeks away. However, voting for 20,000 people in just Atlantic County began last Saturday. Election Day is every day for the next six weeks!
Right now, as we speak, roughly 20,000 people in Atlantic County have ballots sitting on their kitchen or living room tables. For them, today is Election Day. People are already voting. That’s why you’re seeing so many political ads right now.
We don’t have a November Election Day any more. We have a 75 day vote harvest season. It’s a horrible system. It was designed by – Democrats – to make sure that it’s easier for them – to get votes from who Rush Limbaugh called low information voters. Old timers heard stories about Nucky Johnson and Hap Farley Republicans doing this in Atlantic City, or Democrats like Richard Daley or others doing it in Chicago or other big cities.
On Election Day, they sent an army of election workers out to knock on doors and go up and down the streets dragging everyone they knew to the polls and getting them to vote for the political machine that took care of them.
These were people who didn’t know about politics and didn’t care about politics. Some of them were sick, some were drunk. Some were on drugs. And they would usually vote for whoever the last person they talked to told them to vote for.
But it was hard to get people like this to the polls on one Election Day. Many of them didn’t vote. And that was a good thing.
It was good because for two or three hundred years in America, – elections were decided by people who took the time to go to the polls in person on one Election Day, and there was a very good unintended consequence of doing elections like that.
I remember that back in the good old days, if you wanted to get a welfare payment, or if you wanted to collected unemployment, you physically had to show up at the welfare office, or the unemployment office to fill out some forms and pick up your check.
And that screened out a lot of people. Some were too lazy. Some were drunk or on drugs. Some were trying to cheat the system. And by forcing them to show up in person, a lot of them didn’t collect benefits. And that was a good thing, because most of them were not entitled to those benefits.
The same idea works for elections. When people had to physically show up to vote, you attracted better voters. You attracted people who took voting seriously. They had to get up. They had to get dressed. They had to put their shoes on. They had to get themselves to a particular place on a particular day. That screened out a lot of people who didn’t know anything or who didn’t care anything about the election.
Some were sick. Some were on drugs. Some were drunk. That was about 10% to 20% of voters. And it was good that many of them didn’t vote. It made it easier for better candidates to win elections.
However, now, with a 75 day vote harvest eason, almost all of those low-information voters, low-motivation voters, or no-motivation voters end up voting. They end up voting because community organizers, usually hired by Democrats, have 75 days to find these people and give them forms to fill out and sign.
These community organizers find their voters in bars, dispensaries, on the street, under the Boardwalk, in nursing homes, drug rehab centers, you name it. These low or no motivation voters are the largest voting block, and they now dominate every election.
And it’s really not them who dominate elections now, it is those so-called community organizers – who go out there,
And they tell these no-information, and no-motivation voters, remember me? I helped you fill out the forms that got you free food vouchers, and free food, and free rent, and free gas and electric, and all these benefits. And now, if you want to keep getting all that free stuff, I need you to sign these voting forms for me. Will you do it?
This is how Democrats screwed up our elections almost 30 years ago. But the Democrats didn’t do it by themselves. In 2001, they got help from Republicans like George Bush, – John McCain. Here in New Jersey, Republicans like Governor Christie Todd Whitman helped Democrats do this.
So the Democrats and these clueless Republicans gave us this system. We’re stuck with it. So my advice is to make the best of this bad system. Don’t wait for election day. – I am personally going to get my, ballot – early from Joe Giralo, our Atlantic County Clerk.
And if you’re in a different county, get them from your county clerk. – The forms are online. Or you can call up and get them.
The ballot gets mailed to you. You fill it out. You mail it. You put it in a drop box. Or you return it to your county Board of Elections. Besides voting, it is important to understand the system by practice.
You have kids in college. You have nephews or nieces in college. Someone is going to get them to vote. Someone is going to get them to fill out the forms and get a ballot. Would you rather have that ballot go through their college and “woke” professors? Would you rather have them tell your kids how to vote?
Or would you rather have that ballot go to your house, where you can talk to your kids about it? You may have a parent, or an aunt or uncle or friend in a nursing home or independent – living. – That uncle, that aunt, that friend is going to vote because some social worker is going to help fill out the forms. Would you rather do it, or would you rather let the social worker or some community organizer decide how your mom or dad or aunt or uncle is going to vote?
So, forget November. Election Day is today and every day right up to November 3.
Finally, there’s called Murphy’s Law. Even if you have the best intention of voting on November 3, it is certain that some people with the best intentions will not vote in person on that last Election Day of November 3. People get sick, people get distracted by some emergency at work or with family. Some people simply go home, take a nap and forget. I found that out years ago when I lost my first election by three votes!
So Murphy’s Law is another important reason to contact the County Clerk and vote by mail– or in person in Mays Landing, or Cape May Court House, or Bridgeton or Toms River.
LibertyAndProsperity.com is a tax-exempt, non-political education organization of roughly 200 citizens who mostly live near Atlantic City, New Jersey. We formed this group in 2003. We volunteer our time and money to maintain this website. We do our best to post accurate information. However, we admit we make mistakes from time to time. If you see any mistakes or inaccurate, misleading, outdated, or incomplete information in this or any of our posts, please let us know. We will do our best to correct the problem as soon as possible. Please email us at info@libertyandprosperity.com or telephone (609) 927-7333.
If you agree with this post, please share it now on Facebook or Twitter by clicking the “share” icons above and below each post. Please copy and paste a short paragraph as a “teaser” when you re-post.
Also, because Facebook, YouTube and other social media often falsely claim our posts violate their “community standards”, they greatly restrict, “throttle back” or “shadow ban” our posts. Please help us overcome that by sharing our posts wherever you can, as often as you can. Please copy and paste the URL link above or from the Twitter share button to the “comments” section of your favorite sites like Patch.com or PressofAtlanticCity.com. Please also email it to your friends. Open and use an alternate social media site like Gab.com.
Finally, please subscribe to our weekly email updates. Enter your email address, name, city and state in the spaces near the top of our home page at Homepage – Liberty and Prosperity. Then click the red “subscribe” button. Or contact us at info@libertyandprosperity.com, (609) 927-7333, or the below address. Thanks.
Seth Grossman, Executive Director
LibertyAndProsperity.com
453 Shore Road
Somers Point, NJ 08244
Excellent article Seth.
Seth, I have admired your dedication and your courage and your hard work on behalf of the people of New Jersey for all these years. I escaped to Florida and I miss those Saturday meetings. Thank you for all the work you do.